This relates generally to integrated circuits, and more particularly, to integrated circuits with wireless communications circuitry.
Wireless integrated circuits are often used in wireless base transceiver stations to provide wireless communications capabilities (as an example). Since the operating cost for a base station is proportional to the amount of power consumption, it is generally desirable to minimize power consumption on the wireless integrated circuits.
In one conventional method, a programmable integrated circuit is organized into regions referred to as tiles, where each tile can either be statically operated in a low power mode (i.e., by statistically biasing that tile with a low voltage) or in a high speed mode (i.e., by statically biasing that tile with a high voltage). This way of configuring tiles in either the low power mode or the high speed mode is referred to as static voltage scaling and is set once upon programming the integrated circuit and cannot be changed during normal operation.
In another conventional method, an integrated circuit has different portions that can be configured in different power modes using high level system software. For example, software controlled time-division-duplexing (TDD) switches can be used to power down parts of the transmit circuitry during certain time slots and to power down parts of the receiver circuitry during other time slots. The different power modes are, however, not a direct function of the required processing capability of the transmit and receive circuitry.